TURN-ONS AND TURN-OFFS IN CURRENT HOME ENTERTAINMENT RELEASES : ****Excellent ***Good **Fair *Poor : VIDEOCASSETTES

“The VCR Basketball Game.” Interactive VCR Games. $44. Once you wade through the confusing instruction sheet, this board game provides a reasonable amount of fun. Cards and dice take care of shots, passes, fouls, rebounds, et al., but the key gimmick is the videocassette full of NBA action, which then applies to the game at hand (and finally gives the league something to do with its ancient Fort Wayne vs. Syracuse films). Need exercise? You actually shoot your foul shots with a toy ball. There are some shortcomings in the rules, the game doesn’t really test your basketball brain, and they forgot the narration on a Clippers video segment (typical Clippers luck). Final score on the test game: Matsumoto 50, Cromelin 47 on a three-pointer by Dr. J. Available at many toy and game stores. ***